BST Memories

I actually wrote this a longass time ago but I never posted it, but I figured it'd be a good post to get back into BST mode, I still laugh over this situation as it reminds me about how fun playing BST is.

Old Post (past):

So today I started levelling BST again, I haven't touched BST in a long time so I kind of forgot how to play it. When you're a BST all alone in a camp or secluded part of the zone as you often are you really need to be more attentive than you would in a normal XP situation. Cause when things go wrong, there's usually never anyone around to help, which means if you want to live, you need to be able to think and act fast. There's no whm behind you to throw out that emergency cure or that blm to sleep a link, or that war to voke something off you. As I was saying, I had forgotten how to play this job, so on with the story.

I scrambled through my mog safe, mog locker, and mule to grab whatever BST items I had left and discovered, to my delight, I hadn't sold most of the equip I used when I stopped playing the job. I filled in the remaining gaps by buying some Merc Captain's armor with my overabundance of conquest points in Windurst. I figured once I hit 40 I'll be redoing much of my armor anyway so I didn't spend much.. or any gil.. on BST for this level.

After browsing the BST forums on Alla to refresh my memory on the prime levelling locations, I settled on Yuhtunga Jungle. Seemed like a good choice.. at the time.

I had loosely read the directions on how to get to the camp and found it with little difficulty by use of Outpost Warp. It felt good, being in the wild, on my own, just me and native jungle inhabitants, I really missed this playstyle.

I then went back to the forum to make sure I was in the right camp and to read what the strategy was here. As I'm doing so, I hear the aggro noise that we've all come to know and love. Quickly going back to FFXI, I realize I parked my char at a crappy spot, and had a Very Tough Goblin Robber hitting me. Lovely.

So what came next, panic of course. My first instinct was to run, which I started to do. Though some point between noticing I was in yellow HP and figuring out which direction I was running I realized I was a BST and BSTs could Charm! There were two perfectly good Soldier Crawlers in front of me, which would've made great pets, only when I opened my macro set.. I was on my BLM set. /sigh.

So I'm running away, dodging further gob aggro, and fumbling through my macros to get to my BST set when I come to the open area by the outpost. I find the macro set and I'm able to Charm Bind the Gob that's chasing me to get alittle further ahead.

By the outpost the only Charmable pet around are Easy Prey Young Opo-opo's, which are resistant to charm might I add. I take the risk and Charm one figuring it's just Easy Prey and to my relief I now have an EP pet. I quickly send it to fight the gob chasing me and I have a moment of relief. A brief moment..

Thinking I'm home free I run what I think is a good distance away from the intense battle between my monkey pet and that gob to Cure myself up. Was it a good distance? Nah, so my cure II grabs hate and the goblin loses interest in my pet and starts running toward me again. Joy.

So I begin kiting it around the open area of the Outpost till my pet could regain hate, only as I was doing so.. I catch aggro from a Goblin Furrier in the area. My pet finally catches up with the Goblin Robber and they begin to fight again but now I'm stuck with the Furrier still on me. Thankfully it's only Easy Prey so I decide to engage it.

It didn't take long for the VT Robber to finish off my EP Opo-opo and I did notice this. Only managing to get the Furrier down to 75% I had to disengage to get another pet. Again the only thing in the area being Opo-opo's I go for another one. This time.. it fails.

So here I am with a Young Opo-opo, Goblin Furrier, and Goblin Robber all heading after me, at this point I'm thinking I'm pretty dead so I decide to make a run for it and see how far I get. I figured I'd head for Sea Serpent Grotto and to my surprise, I manage to drop down the correct hole and I'm down by the waterfall heading to SSG with a nice lead on all my enemies I managed to make.

I had 22 HP as I'm heading toward the waterfall, I'm pretty much home free though. Figuring I'd just avoid the Sahagins and all would be good. I was feeling pretty good right about now.

Then it happens:
The River Sahagin starts casting Dia II.

NO! 22 HP, knowing my death would come fast I stopped to cast cure II, only I didn't look at my MP and didn't have enough for a cure II. So I start casting cure I and by that time the Sahagin catches up to me and kills me.


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Looking back on this situation there are so many things I could've done differently had I remembered more about playing BST. Not going AFK in a spot where I'm likely to get aggro would've prevented that whole situation. Being prepared and having my macros ready would've ended it quicker as well. Remember all the abilities of the job I had available to me such as the stack of Jug Pets in my inventory which would've come in handy had I remembered that or properly using Tame to stop a mischarm which also could've helped. I could've used Reward too to make Opo-opo last longer to give myself more time. Also I was wearing a pair of powder boots at the time which would've given me Flee that I could have used as well. Even just using my chocobo whistle to scout the camp and not getting off my chocobo till I was ready to start could've done the trick too.

My survival instincts will come back to me, but I do feel like I'm learning how to be a BST all over again.

In current news, my BST is back in business, currently lvl 42, and I hope to be able to write about BST for a long time to come :)

Bst Adventures lvl 36-37

Lets talk about food, before 35 I used meat, in pts, and solo, just cause it was cheap, gave me a boost in str (among other things), and it was something to eat. Now that I'm more into my stats and soloing, I've been looking into other things. Now the first thing that popped into my head was sushi since accuracy imo is the most important melee stat a BST should have to worry about (more on that later), but sushi was expensive, and I'm only lvl 36 so I'm not quite ready for that. Then by use of the somepage food guide, I discovered Rice Dumplings. They added +5 to accuracy which was acceptable to me as well as +17HP, +3str, +2 vit, +1agi, +20% attack (caps at 45), and +2 to HHP and HMP. I really liked the hp and mp regen while resting, the accuracy, and the str/hp/vit was always helpful. And at roughly 7-9k per stack I figured they'd be a good bridge between meat and sushi.

Level 36:

Seeing too many DC's in Bibiki I decided to make the move to Sea Serpent Grotto. This zone is a BST paradise! I stayed by the zone within the first "loop" on the map running circles around it charming EM leeches and fighting tough bats and sahagins. Now this camp isn't the safest since sahagins aggro sound but at this point in your BST career, avoiding aggro should be second nature to you, or if you do get aggro you can sic a pet on it, charm bind it, and zone. This camp goes untouched most of the time, lots of high levels running through the area since it's by the zone entrance, some even tossed a cure or stuck around to watch.


I stayed for till about halfway to 37 then got called away to help Chriseh do his Savage Blade WSNM followed by a Rostrum Pumps run with SotL.

Level 36-37:

Later that night Jean had a spot in his party after Bermont left with a few LS PLs so I took the opportunity to go into PT BST mode. The PT had jean as nin, 2 wars, a rdm and blm and me as BST. We were in Crawlers Nest and the XP was great for a pt this level. Not only did I finish my level and get to 37, but stayed for another full level and hit 38. Now as I stated in my last BST post, we're by no means a gimp pt job just because we can solo. While alone I wasn't the top DD, but combined with my pet, I greatly outparsed the top warrior.


Combined with my Funguar pet I did 25,573 damage total, over 7,000 more than the top melee DD. And my pet wasn't fighting 100% of the time, sometimes I had to use Leave to shed aggro then wait for the Call Beast recast so there were 2-3 battles where it wasn't participating. Bringing a BST to your pt at this level is like bringing 2 DDs, don't underestimate a BST with its flag up. I'll continue to solo of course, but I'll always be open to pting.

Bst Adventures lvl 35

I dinged level 35 in a Garlaige pt, I was the top DD pt between me and my jug pet. My tiger jug pet did the most damage in the party and combined with mine just shot me up even there even further. This was the case for a few reasons: First off, melee DD jobs don't have access to the best gear at this level, meaning they hit for less and a lot less often. This makes my tiger look awesome in terms of its accuracy and damage compared to the average melee DD. In later levels the pt BST doesn't shine as much but in this range, there is absolutely no reason why anyone wouldn't want a BST for their pt.

So now that I have Leave, a most awesome ability, I chose Bibiki Bay to test this ability. For those that don't know Leave is the defining ability of a BST.. well I suppose you could say Charm is the defining ability of a BST since without Charm, a BST is just a bad warrior. But in any case Leave gives us the ability to solo the most effectively from 35 to 75 than any other job in the game. When you kill a monster with a charmed pet, you take a 30% xp penalty so the goal here in every battle is to end the battle alone with no pet, finishing off the monster yourself. What Leave lets us do is dismiss a pet with no aggro at any point in the battle, most often used when the monster has between 3-10% HP left, then the BST simply has to finish off the monster and get the full xp. At 35 and beyond your pet not only acts as a great DD but also a tank so you can melee alongside your pet and hardly ever have to worry about taking hits. Leave has other great uses to avoid links and shed aggro but this is the primary use, anyway more on BST tactics in later posts.

Level 35:

Bibiki Bay was a wonderful experience, by the zone to Buburimu you had Dhamels, Ravens, Efts, Rarabs all between DC and Tough with an adequate number of Even Matches to charm. The XP, while still not as good as a standard xp pt, was consistent getting around 150 per kill no ring. I was able to hit chain 4 once due to the plentiful number of good pets and prey around. There was some competition at times, I had at least 3 blu's show up trying to learn Wild Carrot off rarabs with some high level friends, but they just stuck to rarabs, also had other bsts show up but there were more than enough monsters to share the camp. Then the last thing was when high levels wanted to camp that NM by the docks which can be annoying but it was a big area so it wasn't too bad. I stayed here alittle over 36 then there were too many DC's around so I decided to make the move.

Me soloing in Bibiki, sporting kat's sexy taru RSE.

Black Mage.. SOLO ONRY

First off let me apologize, due to finals I haven't been on FFXI much or posting but finals will be over soon.

I never considered black mage a big solo job, well I knew they could sleep, nuke, sleep, nuke but that's not exactly a way to gain a consistent amount of experience points per hour. However I discovered a new method I was experimenting with yesterday in which a black mage can solo and gain as much experience points per hour as an average xp party setup.


This trend seems to be becoming more popular since I begin reading and seeing it more and more and it's really an awesome way to gain xp. The DD role in xp pts never appealed to me which is why I turned to solo jobs like bst when I wanted to level a DD job however I may turn back to blm now that I have this new and fun way gain xp.

Here's how blms can do it:

- You find a camp with beastmen monsters that are much higher than what you'd normally fight in a 6 person xp pt, this camp has to have at least 1 beastmen monster that has a pet (smn, bst), whether it be an elemental, goblin's leech, rarab, or whatever, any pet will do.

- Now since the pet is always a few levels below the level of its beastmen master, if the camp you chose is good, the pet of the beastmen should be right in the level range of the monsters you'd normally fight in a xp pt at your level.

- Ok now here's the real trick, if you pull the pet of the beastmen while the beastmen has its back turned, you can pull just the pet. And so long as the beastmen doesn't turn around or see its pet fighting you, it will go about its business.

- Pets of beastmen monsters have very low HP, at my level it's around 500-600 HP, which means a few blm nukes can wipe them out fast, as little as 20 seconds. Once you get above 50 and learn ancient magic, you can one-shot these pets. Either way you can pull off consistent chains this way, just as a normal xp pt would.


Once the pet is dead, the beastmen monster will summon a new pet within 30 seconds, and you can use that time to rest and recast anything you need to. Now obviously this isn't without risk, it is soloing afterall. Since you're in areas that have monsters that are much much higher than you'd normally have to deal with, things can and will go wrong.

• - If you get aggro from something else in the area, while fighting/resting.
  
• - The beastmen turns to face its pet as you're casting a spell
• - You get resisted too much and can't kill the pet fast enough

...Or any other number of things, you could find yourself eatting dirt. Of course black mages do have some things that can help them such as elemental seal, sleepga, warp, but usually when dealing with monsters this high above you, aggro = death. Soloing will always be risky, however that's where half the fun comes from, just reraise yourself and continue. Now this strategy isn't limited to just black mages either, other jobs like blue mage can do this too.


What you need to get started:

• - A desire to level blm, duh! Without wanting to level black mage and spend alittle gil on equipping yourself with decent gear then forget this.
• - Decent gear. Yes while true in soloing you have no one to impress but yourself, this strategy heavily depends on not getting resisted and doing high damage fast. Magic Attack Bonus and +int gear / food helps a great deal. Also you may want to look into spell interuption/HP/Vit/Def gear as before 50+ you will most likely be getting hit.
• - A ninja sub! Yes while blm/nin may look silly to people, it's what you need to survive! Before 50+ it's almost required to have nin for utsusemi. This is because you can't kill the pets in one hit before 50, so in order to get those 2-3 spells off to kill the pets, you'll need shadows up (SS and blink don't cut it). Also with a nin sub you can dual wield wand for a nice boost in stats. By the time you hit 50+ you can go back to a whm or rdm sub.
• - The ability to take risks and try something new. Yes this is different than the normal xp pt style and soloing again is very risky. You will die, probably lots of times before you get the hang of soloing. You can think you know this game well enough to do this perfectly, but soloing definitely takes practice to get good at.
• - Reraise earrings. No explanation required, you'll need one, especially subbing nin may wanna consider a few hi-potions or HP drinks.

Well that should give you a good overview of the solo life of a black mage, I look forward to getting more into this when I get more time to play. I hope some of you aspiring blms out there may choose to give this a try too. Here is an awesome camp guide for blm solo camps that so far has worked out great for me, I'll keep you updated on my blm solo experiences as time goes on.

Crazy exp

I think this is the most exp I've ever gotten on a single mob.